MEDICAL welcomes Tryton !

We have started working in extending MEDICAL to support the Tryton ERP. Tryton is a great ERP with a solid free software philosophy, not only for releasing the source code, but by having NO LOCK-IN policies. So this is what we will achieve

- Freedom of choice : Now the user will have complete freedom in Operating System, Database or ERP . The user will be able to choose from OpenERP or Tryton.

- Guarantee Upgrades : MEDICAL must rely on an architecture that allows the user to upgrade their infrastructure. The users and health centers should have the upgrade tools and documentation to update the operating system, database and ERP at no cost if they choose to do. Today we see that concept in GNU/Linux, Postgresql and Tryton. This schema guarantees that the end user has the best and most updated MEDICAL version, as well as the underlining components.

In this sense, we, as a community, will always be vigilant to any lock-in strategy in the underlying software (operating system, database or ERP) that could compromise its sustainability.

Many organizations around the world have chosen MEDICAL to improve the lives of the underprivileged. This community keeps growing because not only because of its technical capabilities, but also because of the free software philosophy behind it.

- Vendor independence : We, as a community, can NOT depend on a single vendor or group of vendors for the future of MEDICAL (or any free software solution for that matter). MEDICAL does not belong to Thymbra. MEDICAL is part of a non-for-profit organization, GNU Solidario, which can not be bought or fall into speculators hands. MEDICAL is a public good.

- Back to the roots : We need to get back to the origins of Free Software. As I said, this is not about only "open source", but about community and ethics.

I believe that today we have the perfect scenario of freedom of choice, vendor independence, no lock-in policies of any type, community and evolution. These factors guarantee the sustainability of MEDICAL for the current and all the next installations around the world.

We will of course keep on developing MEDICAL so it will have the same functionality in all the environments (OpenERP, Tryton, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD...).

Today is a great day for MEDICAL and for Free Software.

About Medical

Medical is a free (GPL license), centralized Health and Hospital Information System that provides the following functionality :

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

Hospital Information System (HIS)

Health Information System

Medical is part of GNU Solidario ( http://gnusolidario.org/en ) . GNU Solidario is a NGO that delivers education and health solutions with free software.

In this view, it's easy to look for patient's locations and status in the hospital. The colors visually differentiate the type of admissions.

We have also improve other sections, like vaccinations. Thanks to Andrew Gledhill (NHS) who proposed the addition of the vaccine lot and expiration date. Actually, the vaccine is integrated to the product, so all the production lot, traceability, and procurement is automated. Special controls for vaccine expiration dates have been put in place now.

I could write many pages, but it all comes down to one concept: ethics.
When I talk about Free Software, I talk about not only about freedom, but also community and good will from the software author. The latter probably is the most important one.
You write Free Software because you want to contribute to the community. It's an act of social activism. It's about sharing and helping out.
This April I got a mail from Chris Larsen, a doctor working in Rwanda, where he was asking OpenERP the scripts to upgrade to 6.x, since they needed to have the latest Medical version. The response he got was that the scripts were not publicly available anymore. If they wanted to upgrade, they would have to pay a support contract to OpenERP. This is the typical example of a vendor lock-in. They change the rules (even the license) and then the user becomestheir prisoner.
That very same day I started the implementation of GNU Health (previously called "medical") in the Tryton platform. B…